This Supremes Decision Was Clearly... Error. So Jackson, Kagan And Sotomayor Said So. They Are Absolutely... Right.

When the Supremes get this matter on the merits, they will have to grapple with the Eighth Amendment -- which applies to all people on US soil -- and its absolute prohibition on cruel and unusual punishments.

To force (at greater US expense) people to the other side of the planet -- to places where both torture and starvation are common, and almost none of them speak a single word of the native language. . . certainly seems designed primarily to "punish" -- and punish with cruel effect. [It is also unusual, in that no prior preznit, in the last ten or so, has ever done this.]

And so, the Wise Latina Justice, Justice Kagan and Justice Jackson have it right, in dissent:

. . .In matters of life and death, it is best to proceed with caution. In this case, the Government took the opposite approach. It wrongfully deported one plaintiff to Guatemala, even though an Immigration Judge found he was likely to face torture there.

Then, in clear violation of a court order, it deported six more to South Sudan, a nation the State Department considers too unsafe for all but its most critical personnel. An attentive District Court’s timely intervention only narrowly prevented a third set of unlawful removals to Libya. Rather than allowing our lower court colleagues to manage this high-stakes litigation with the care and attention it plainly requires, this Court now intervenes to grant the Government emergency relief from an order it has repeatedly defied. I cannot join so gross an abuse of the Court’s equitable discretion. . . .

[Morevoer,] noncitizens facing removal of any sort are entitled under international and domestic law to raise a claim under the Convention Against Torture and Other Cruel, Inhuman or Degrading Treatment or Punishment, Dec. 10, 1984, S. Treaty Doc. No. 100–20, 1465 U. N. T. S. 113. Article 3 of the Convention prohibits returning any person “to another State where there are substantial grounds for believing that he would be in danger of being subjected to torture.”

The United States is a party to the Convention, and in 1998 Congress passed the Foreign Affairs Reform and Restructuring Act to implement its commands. The Act provides that “[i]t shall be the policy of the United States not to expel, extradite, or otherwise effect the involuntary return of any person to a country in which there are substantial grounds for believing the person would be in danger of being subjected to torture, regardless of whether the person is physically present in the United States.” §2242(a), 112 Stat. 2681–822, codified as note to 8 U. S. C. §1231. It also directs the Executive to “prescribe regulations to implement” the Convention. §2242(b), 112 Stat. 2681–822. Those regulations provide, among other things, that “[a] removal order . . . shall not be executed in circumstances that would violate Article 3.” 28 CFR §200.1 (2024). . . .

D A M N A T I O N. This court shames itself, and the rule of law tonight.

नमस्ते